The Psychology of Quality and More

C Style: Standards and Guidelines (contents)

CHAPTER 2 : Psychological Factors

PART 1 : BASICS

CHAPTER 2 : Psychological Factors

2.1 Pattern Recognition
2.2 Filtering
2.3 Habit
2.4 Redundancy
2.5 Cues and Context
2.6 Recognizing Basic features
2.7 Short Term, Working and Long Term memory
2.8 Chunking
2.9 The Rule of Seven
2.10 Context Switching
2.11 Modifying the image
2.12 Memorizing sounds
2.13 Eye focus
2.14 Eye movement
2.15 Looking ahead
2.16 Looking back
2.17 The subconscious is always right
2.18 Natural ambition
2.19 Summary

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2.11 Modifying the image

A compensatory trick of the brain: if the eyes see something that is almost like a known pattern, then the brain can modify the image so that it is recognized as the original known pattern. Similarly, the brain will insert missing items or remove extraneous items from a known sequence. How often have you glanced at someone, and thought that you recognized them - until you took a closer look. This usually occurs in a situation where you are not looking for differences, and where the differences may be quite small.

Similarly, in programming, it is very easy to mistake a name or layout for one which is almost the same. In particular, if the first usage is well established, then this second usage will easily be confused with the first.

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